Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Asia and the Pacific, Volume VI, Part 1

694.001/8–2651

Memorandum of Telephone Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Rusk)

confidential

[Washington,] August 25, 1951.

Subject: Vietnamese Statements on the Japanese Peace Treaty

Participants:	Mr. Pierre Millet—Counselor, French Embassy
	Dean Rusk—Assistant Secretary of State

I telephoned Mr. Millet and told him that we were very much disturbed about the statements¹ being made in Vietnam about the Japanese Peace Treaty. I said that it would come as a rude shock to the United States if, after having made a major political compromise in order to invite the Associated States, we should discover that they were a source of trouble rather than support. I said that we hoped the French Government would do everything within its power to explain the situation to the Associated States in order that the latter would prove to be loyal friends at San Francisco.

Mr. Millet said that he and Ambassador Bonnet had also been very much concerned about it, that the Ambassador had already sent a strong message on the subject to Paris, and that he would send an additional message on the basis of my talk.²

1. In telegram 463, from Saigon, August 24, Chargé Edmund A. Gullion had cabled excerpts from an interview by President Tran Van Huu of Vietnam (Associated State of the French Union). The President had stated in part: “I am deciding to go personally to San Francisco because there is an essential action, the first international conference in which Vietnam is participating … I want to make known Vietnam’s right to reparations. … In 1945 the damages caused by the Japanese occupation were estimated at 16 billion of the piasters of that period. This figure should be multiplied by 30 or 40 according to the increase of cost of living. … In the face of Chinese Communism and in the face of Japanese rearmament, Vietnam will ask at San Francisco a defensive military pact with France, the United States, and England for the protection of Vietnam against aggression.” (694.001/8–2451)
2. In telegram 1251, from Paris, August 27, Ambassador David Bruce reported on the French reaction to Ambassador Henri Bonnet’s message on this conversation. Ambassador Bruce said in part: “Baeyens told us that [Minister for the Associated States] Letourneau ‘guaranteed’ that Huu and other Assoc States reps San Francisco conf ‘wld not get out of line’. According Baeyens, Amb Bonnet’s telegram was strongly critical Huu’s public statements, feeling shared by Letourneau and FonOff. They explained Huu probably talking for domestic consumption in Vietnam.” (694.001/8–2751)